Divine purposes and methods (Evolution)

by David Turell , Friday, December 28, 2018, 18:08 (2155 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Obviously intelligence is the driving force. The role survival plays is survival, which is a requirement for any process of evolution. That is all I have ever claimed.

dhw: The starting point of this discussion was your claim that “there is little real evidence that survival plays any role in evolution”. All the developments I listed (fins, baleens, camouflage, migration, webs etc.), plus millions of others, constitute evolution, and you believe your God designed them all for the purpose of survival, so if you now wish to withdraw your original claim, we can end this part of the discussion.

We know something drives evolution. I've always said survival doesn't. My above quote was simply referencing to that point, but was not clear to you, and I should have stated it more directly.

DAVID: Again you ignore the evidence bacteria present. There was never a need for them to complexify into multicellular forms. Does necessity drive evolution? No!

dhw: I have made the same point over and over again: we do not know why multicellularity occurred, but once it had, the innovations which constitute evolution were either necessary for survival or improved organisms’ chances of survival, as you have now agreed. Again you ignore the fact that evolution was not a straight line from simple to complex, and the great bush does not suggest that your God’s only purpose was to create us.

Why do you persist in ignoring God's chosen method? What you describe is how He did it. I'm simply using the facts of history and we are here as the present end point of evolution.

dhw: I have never questioned your right to quote whichever scientists you like, and to interpret their findings as you wish. However, I do question your right to dismiss my own criticisms of your conclusions on the grounds that I have had no scientific training, and would point out that scientists who disagree with you have had just as much scientific training as you have.

Thank you for allowing me to interpret science. You have simply found a very few scientists who support your a priori view, while I view their verbiage as hyperbole about known biochemical facts in regard to reactions.

dhw: I have no objection to the argument that humans are currently the most intelligent and most powerful evolutionary achievement. Your illogicality lies in your belief that your God is always in full control and yet spent 3.5+ billion years specially designing millions of innovations, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders to provide food for more and more innovations, econiches, lifestyles and natural wonders before specially designing what you keep telling us was his only goal (though modified here with “perhaps”). Well, perhaps we weren’t his only goal. Perhaps – if he exists – his goal was to create the great bush of life (whether directly or indirectly through the invention of cellular intelligence) which constitutes life’s history, or perhaps humans came as a later idea, or he was experimenting to achieve his goal (= not always in full control).

You are simply questioning God's chosen method with your own psychoanalysis of God's mind. I say He chose to do it this way because that is what the facts are.

DAVID: You continue to logically recognize the need for food energy for life'd evolution to continue over time, but refuse to accept it as a prime reason for the bush of diversity…

I don’t know why you insert “over time”, but otherwise I most certainly do accept the need for food energy as a prime reason for the bush of diversity. Once multicellularity had begun, survival depended on the ability to eat and not be eaten, so different organisms (combinations of cells) progressively found different ways of finding food while not becoming food – hence the fact now acknowledged by you that the innovations I have listed (fins, baleens etc.) serve the purpose of survival.

DAVID: ...and invent spectacle which has no basis on logical clues, while the need for food is obvious. I use what we obviously know, nothing more. I suggest adding nothing which lacks evidence, which is all I suggest using as I do.

dhw: I’m glad you recognize as obvious the point that, far from survival not playing any role in evolution, evolutionary innovation has resulted from the need for organisms to obtain food in order to survive, to which we must add the need to cope with changing environmental conditions (which 99% of organisms have failed to do). What you have added are the various hypotheses – all lacking evidence – listed above in the sentence beginning “Your illogicality lies…”

My hypotheses are simply reasonable explanations for God's chosen method , while you simply add your humanizing thoughts about His mental process.